


Perilous to Mortals

by ncfan



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (Due to a corrupted lesser ring of power), Altered Mental States, Bechdel Test Pass, Female Character of Color, Gen, POV Female Character, POV Original Character, The East, Third Age, Whatever did happen to the lesser rings anyways?, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 20:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15736590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: "There came a glint of light in the water, in the shallows of the river not far from the bank. When Inzhu waded out to see what it was, she found a large silver ring."In the east of Middle-Earth, a relic of a past Age is discovered by chance. But as Gandalf tells us, even the lesser rings are perilous to mortals...





	Perilous to Mortals

There is a saying among some in the lands far to the west, spoken in jest by some, and others with deadly seriousness: ‘The only thing worse than an oath hastily sworn is a ring whose origins you do not know.’ Very few understand the root of this saying; at least, there are few who understand both roots. Most who have a good grounding in the history of the world know why an oath hastily sworn might be regarded as a danger; they know the danger that can come from swearing without understanding just what it is you’re swearing to do, or what you’re swearing _against_.

But there are fewer who understand just where the origin of that fear of mysterious rings lies. There are stories about magic rings that give their owners their fealty for a time, but inevitably prove treacherous and betray their masters, though they vary from place to place—and just how seriously people take those tales tends to vary from place to place, as well. But few have any inkling of where those tales arrive from, and even fewer know the whole of the sorry tale that spawned the rest.

Once, long ago, when the world was flat and a drowned kingdom of tall Men yet thrived, the wondrous land of Hollin dwelled at the foot of the Misty Mountains and the doorsteps of the Dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dûm. Within Hollin’s fair city of Ost-in-Edhil, Elves and Dwarves and Men dwelled together in friendship. At the height of its glory, the Elves thought it the equal of Gondolin and Tirion upon Túna. The Dwarves felt it a worthy sister of Khazad-dûm. The West-Men said that if any city in the world could rival the fair cities of Westernesse, Ost-in-Edhil could. It is gone now, and its like has not been seen again.

In the days of peace in the Second Age, a visitor came to Ost-in-Edhil: Annatar, claiming to be a Maia of Aulë who had been sent by the Powers to help heal the hurts of a land that had been wracked by war and deeply scarred by evil. Celebrimbor, who was at that time Lord of Hollin, accepted Annatar into the city, welcoming his counsel, for to him and many of the Exiles who dwelled in that land, a means to heal Middle-Earth was greatly welcome, and news that the wrath of the Powers against the Exiles had softened even more so.

And indeed, Annatar taught them many things that they could never have learned without his tutelage, for he had once been a Maia of Aulë, whatever he was now. What is most relevant to this tale, however, was that Annatar taught the Elven-smiths of Ost-in-Edhil the art of making magic rings, of pouring song and power (and other things, though they are buried under dust and soil and locked-up memory, for the protection of anyone who might essay to make a magic ring anew—the making of such a ring need not be evil, but it is inescapably perilous) and into gems and metals. To make these rings into receptacles of power and to imprint the maker’s command into them, it was a subtle art, and not without difficulties.

They need not be evil, but they are always perilous.

All the more perilous if your teacher turns out not to be what he claimed to be.

Annatar revealed himself in due course to be nothing so benevolent a Maia of Aulë. The Valar had not sent him to help teach the Elves how to heal the hurts of Middle Earth. The Valar had sent no such one. Sauron, the Master of Lies, had come among them, and used the knowledge he and they had combined to create the Rings of Power to create a Ring of his own through which he could influence all others, and thus further his designs of dominion over all that lived east of the Sea.

Celebrimbor learned of the deception too late to save fair Hollin, though he learned soon enough to forge the Elven-rings in secret and send them away, far from the reach of Sauron when he would inevitably return to claim the rings he had helped the Elven-smiths create. In time, Ost-in-Edhil was destroyed, Celebrimbor put to slow torment and eventual death, and Hollin was made empty, and wild, and lawless, all its beauty gone to desolate seed.

Sauron took the Nine Rings meant for Men, and the Seven meant for Dwarves (In some accounts, Celebrimbor smuggled one of the Dwarven Rings to Khazad-dûm before his capture, but that is not a part of the tale I am to tell you). There were many lesser rings besides, and those he cared little for, always being inclined to dismiss that which was small and whose capacities were not immediately obvious to him.

It was perilous to use any of the nineteen Great Rings. Those nine lords of Men who were bestowed Rings discovered this to great cost. The effect on the Dwarves was lesser, but still terrible if their corruption was allowed to proceed too far. Even the Elves, whose Rings Sauron had had no hand in the creation of, and whose Rings were not put into use until the dawn of the Third Age after Sauron’s power had (for a time) been broken, could not wield their Rings without a degree of risk.

The lesser rings were scattered to the four winds. Many lay forgotten, and will remain forgotten unto the breaking of the world. Others were found, and worn. The effect they had on their bearers was not as pronounced as the Great. The Rings’ power was proportionate both to the power that had been put into their making, and the natural power of the bearer. These lesser rings had been practice attempts with only a little power put into them when compared to the Great, and they were rarely found by anyone who could claim any real amount of native power within them. But they were still perilous to wear.

-0-0-0-

Inzhu knew nothing of tales of magic rings.

Oh, Inzhu had heard many tales in her time, to be sure. She was a child of the city of Takand, a crossroads for many of the civilizations of Men in the east of the world. There were more languages heard to be spoken in the city than she had fingers; she had heard enough stories in her time to fill up a massive tome of folklore. But the tales of the East did not speak of magic rings; the concept was utterly foreign to her. If you had spoken to her of dust devils and charmed boots and strangers who come to your door in the night, she would have understood their significance immediately, but magic rings were a western fancy, not to be found so far east in the world.

Besides which, Inzhu wasn’t a little girl anymore, and didn’t have as much time to listen to their storytellers weave their tales in the marketplaces as she used to. More’s the pity was her thought on the subject these days; perhaps in one of those tales there would have been a formula to save wilting plants and bring a business back to a state of reliable solvency.

Inzhu was an herbalist who operated her store out of her home, a little house of pale, fired brick in the southwestern quadrant of Takand, near enough to the Dwarven enclave that she occasionally had customers from that district—the Dwarves that lived in Takand showed a marked preference for their own herbalists, but if you needed something your own did not possess, you had little choice but to look outwards for it. She specialized in medicinal plants (and was at the point where anyone who came trying to pester her for a love potion or a charm to disadvantage their rivals was at serious risk of being chased out at broom-point) though she also grew a small number of flowers to sell. She had a walled back garden where she kept some of the plants she grew for her business, and her house was full of pots and hanging baskets, so that it was constantly full of a sweet, sharp scent that seemed to leave the visitor refreshed, even if she did not have what they needed.

If the weather kept on the way it had been, Inzhu wasn’t certain how much longer she was going to have this business, though. The region of the world in which Takand was situated was not known for torrential rainfall. Under normal circumstances, they had enough to get by, but few crops grew here, and most food was imported from further south. Inzhu had seen droughts in her time, and the one that had caged the countryside in its parched grip for the last four months was the worst.

It was the strangest thing. The river nearly a mile south of the Traveler’s Gate didn’t seem to be suffering; the water levels had not receded at all. Neither did the wells seem to be running dry, though water rationing was in full effect anyways. But still, there had been no rain for four months, and though neither the river nor the wells showed any sign of running dry, the air shimmered with dry, blazing heat. The sky was ever a dull, pitiless blue, tinged bronze by dust clouds, unbroken by any cloud. The green grass that grew outside the walls of Takand had turned brown and brittle, and broke under the feet of any traveler who happened to walk the meadows.

Here was Inzhu’s difficulty; it was hardly as if it was _easy_ for her to keep her plants alive under such circumstances. Given her line of work, her daily ration of water was somewhat higher than it was for most people, but she was at the point where she needed to water the plants in her back garden, exposed to the pitiless sun, on a daily basis to keep them from wilting. Or to try to keep them from wilting, would be more accurate; they were looking a little pitiful at all times no matter how often they were watered.

 _And of course the seeds I got from that southerner are sprouting into plants that start to die as soon as they unfurl their leaves. And if_ all _my plants die I have no business, no money to pay taxes, and no house._

They needed rain, and soon. Rain, and cooler weather, an end to the pitiless dry.

“I’ve finished with the back garden,” Anara said in lieu of announcing herself, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, leaving thin streaks of soil across her light umber skin. “Have there been any new customers since I went out back?”

“Just the one,” Inzhu told her with a sigh. “Came asking after valerian; at least I still have plenty of _that_.” She tossed a look that veered between exasperation and fondness at the cluster of valerian plants growing in a massive pot near the back of the room. They were nearly as tall as she was, and guzzled water like a camel after months without. One of her most reliable money-makers, they and the dry she had in her drying-room, but it was making a dent into her water rations.

Anara sighed herself, leaning against the wall with her cheek pressed against the cool (or, at least, cooler than could be found outside) brick. “How many today, then?”

“Three, and I don’t think it’s at all likely we’ll be seeing any more.” Inzhu looked around the large room, her eyes darting from the pots, to the shut door down to her drying-room, to the staircase that led to the more private part of the house. She wanted to be optimistic, she really did. It was entirely possible that, any minute now, someone would come in through the door asking about a tea mix or a poultice or _something_. She might make more money today. But past experience didn’t hold with optimism. It was afternoon, and the afternoon was hot and dry and full of bugs. People didn’t venture out unnecessarily in the afternoon, and most of her clients tended to walk in through the door in the morning. “I might as well take our laundry down to the river.”

In her bedroom, Inzhu shed her yellow kamzol—a sleeveless jacket might give her the air of a businesswoman, but it would just be in the way while she was doing her washing, and she didn’t want to risk tearing it on the rocks—and changed her tunic and trousers for older, more worn clothing that she wouldn’t shed any tears over if she came back and found them torn or stained beyond her capacity to clean.

Stepping back out into the hall with her laundry basket, Inzhu raised her eyebrows to see Anara step out of her own room, clothed in her leather jerkin and stiff boots, her short, curved kylysh saber sheathed in its flower-printed steel scabbard at her waist. Her dark hair was braided tightly, and she might not have worn her helmet, but on her head was a sturdy, close-fitting leather cap dyed red.

“Are you going back to the market, then?” Inzhu asked her, dredging up a weary smile for her cousin’s benefit. “You were just there this morning.”

Anara shook her head. “I’ve already spoken to all the merchants who arrived since the last time I went, and I went to all the locals planning to travel soon this morning—those I could get access to, at least. None of them have need of another mercenary in their guard detail.” Her lip curled. “And I was informed by several of them that regardless of whether they thought they had enough guards, they didn’t see what protection a _woman_ could possibly provide them.”

 _That_ provoked a wince, though not commiseration; Inzhu knew by now that any attempt at commiseration would not make Anara feel any better. “Then what is all this for? I’ve never known you to go armed like this in the city, not even during that time a few years ago when there were all those thefts in the next neighborhood over.”

“I’m going with you down to the river,” Anara told her matter-of-factly, and reached back inside her room to drop a ball of clothing into Inzhu’s basket.

Inzhu jerked her head back. “What? Anara, I don’t need guarding. It’s just the river.”

That was apparently not Anara’s opinion, as she slid past Inzhu towards the stairs. “If one of the great of our fair city decide to carry off an herbalist to make poisons for them, I’ll not see them carry off _you_. I’m coming with you.”

“You’ve spent too much time in northern Harad,” Inzhu retorted, following her down the stairs with a frown etched deep into her face. “I don’t know what else you can expect of people living so close to Mordor, but it’s a bit of a stretch to assume that Takand will be like that, too, isn’t it? No one’s ever tried to kidnap me before.”

Anara simply shrugged and headed for the front door.

Battle lost, then. If Inzhu told Anara not to follow her, she’d just ignore her and follow her anyways. Inzhu rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine. Be that way.” Her voice softened slightly. “I’ll be glad of the company, even if you are useless at washing clothes.”

Anara grimaced. “Just that one time, Inzhu.”

“Those were my best trousers, and you _mangled_ the appliqué. I thought Nilûzîr was going to gut you when she saw what you’d done to them.”

“Nilûzîr needs to stop sticking her nose into our business,” Anara muttered, but stood aside to let Inzhu leave the house first, and made no more paranoid comments as they headed for the Traveler’s Gate.

There were four gates in and out of Takand. The Great Gate was reserved for the use of the nobles of Takand, ambassadors and envoys, high-ranking officials, and foreign nobles; anyone who did not fall into one of these categories caught trying to leave or enter the city through that gate would be subject to a heavy fine. The Beggar’s Gate was its direct opposite; in theory, anyone could use it so long as they were on foot, but in practice, only the very poor and sometimes refugees from other lands used that gate. The Merchant’s Gate was for the use of, obviously, merchants, both traveling on their own and in caravans. The Traveler’s Gate was the most genuinely open gate of any of them. Where the Beggar’s Gate was open to anyone traveling on foot only in theory, the Traveler’s Gate was genuinely open to anyone entering or leaving Takand.

Inzhu smiled to herself as the great arch of the Traveler’s Gate came into view—two massive limestone camels that were painted a pale, buttery yellow, and faced each other placidly. Birds perched on each of their twin humps; an exceptionally large eagle lit on the top of one of the camel’s heads, sending the others into flight. The Great Gate with its archway of rearing horses was renowned throughout the lands, but there was a comfort in passing under the camel-arch. Camels were hardier than horses, and to pass beneath them felt like a good omen in this time of drought, even if Inzhu knew that, in all likelihood, she was spinning up a superstition whole cloth. Oh, well. Superstitions had to come from somewhere.

They met many people on the path down to the river: parents with their children, the poor of Takand who couldn’t afford the fee required to gain entry into a bathhouse. There was a young woman in a beaded green dress who smiled and waved to Anara, and laughed brightly when Anara turned her face hastily away.

“Do I _want_ to know?” Inzhu murmured, eyebrow raised as she scanned Anara’s face, trying to guess if her eyes were deceived, or if her cousin might actually be blushing.

“It’s private,” Anara muttered.

“Private it is, then.”

The path grew less crowded as they neared the river, giving way to steep, stony hills whose only vegetation were the thorny thistles that grew taller than Inzhu and Anara put together, like small trees with faded purple flowers. Their leaves were brown and dead, and many of them were dry brown husks that whistled hollowly when the wind passed by. Inzhu waved gnats away from her face, and tried not to look at them any more than she had to.

There were fewer flies down by the river; a dry breeze, not cool, exactly, but refreshing all the same, swept the flies away, and left anyone down by the river in peace. There was that at least, and the promise of a few trees growing in the stony banks, tough, gnarled pines to give some small degree of shade.

Inzhu wasn’t the only one who’d had the idea of doing her laundry today. As she and Anara mounted the last gently rolling hill to come to the riverbank, she saw about fifteen women up and down the bank scrubbing at their clothes, including at least one she knew. A small smile stole over her face as she made for a particular empty spot.

“Is business slow for you as well?” she asked Nilûzîr as she settled down some seven feet away from her and began to sort through her laundry. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out at this time of day.”

Nilûzîr shook her head, disturbing the glossy black curls that flowed smoothly down her back, never seeming to frizz no matter how hot it was, despite the fact that she wore no oil in her hair. “No trouble to my business; actually, I’ve had more people in than usual—they all want clothes made with lighter-weight fabrics.” The smile faded from her face, her clear gray eyes narrowing slightly and her olive brow furrowing. “Why? Have you had trouble?”

Inzhu nodded wearily and gestured to the cloudless, blue-bronze sky.

Nilûzîr winced. “Ah, I suppose that would be a problem. I hadn’t seen you out and about during the day in so long, I hadn’t thought there was anything wrong.”

“I haven’t seen _you_ ; I thought you’d forgotten I existed entirely.”

A bright laugh and a flick of water in Inzhu’s direction followed. “Falling back on self-pity, are we? Some cold water will cure that. And what of you?” she called back to Anara, standing back a few feet and watching the exchange with bemusement. “Come to mutilate some more of your cousin’s poor clothes? I almost couldn’t save that pair of trousers.”

Anara raised an eyebrow, though no real ire darkened her face. “No. I’m just here to make sure no one carries her off.”

Inzhu rolled her eyes and whispered loudly to Nilûzîr, “You see what I deal with?”

But Nilûzîr seemed not to hear, because she laughed again, rather incredulously. “ _What_? Who do you expect to carry her off?”

“You might. You’ve always had a carrying-off kind of look.”

Nilûzîr gave a huff of laughter, pressing a hand to her hip. “I’d only carry someone off if I had somewhere better than my house to carry them off _to_. And if I carry Inzhu off—“ she caught Inzhu’s eye and winked disconcertingly “—it’ll only be if she asked me to, so really, it doesn’t count.”

Inzhu laughed nervously, and prayed she’d turned her head away quickly enough that Nilûzîr couldn’t see the blush that darkened her cheeks. Hopefully she’d just attribute it to the heat, if she had seen it.

Washing clothes was, Inzhu would admit, not her favorite activity. She wasn’t the rough hand that Anara was (and that Anara was so heavy-handed with this still astounded her, considering how deft Anara was with her knives and saber), but she always worried that she was going to rip something, or that her efforts to get a stain out would only drive it further in, and so on. Inzhu worked on a pair of trousers delicately, carefully treating the appliqué around the hems (leopards) before handing them off to Anara to find a good, large rock to lay them out to dry on. Inzhu might not need watching over, but at least her cousin could ward off any clothes thieves.

Inzhu let the buzz of conversation wash over her, let it distract her from her worries. Someone or other’s daughter was getting married to a suitor rather below her station, and the parents of the prospective bride were, to put it mildly, recalcitrant. A bird enthusiast was chattering excitedly about the number of eagles that had been sighted in the area and how unusual it was to see this many of them; personally, Inzhu wasn’t certain how you told one eagle from another, but alright. Most interesting of all was the news that the city was planning on building a new reservoir. No one knew where or when, or how it would affect the river, but everyone agreed it was going to happen eventually.

 _It’s a pity Anara doesn’t know anything about constructing reservoirs_ , Inzhu thought, sparing a sympathetic glance up at her cousin, who was standing watch by the slowly-increasing mass of their drying clothes and was frankly looking a bit uncomfortable. _She’d have steady work again for a good, long while_.

As Inzhu was working on washing one of Anara’s tunics, a flash of light in the water caught her eye. She frowned, trying to focus on it. It wasn’t in the right spot to be the reflection of the sun on the water; the sun wasn’t quite high enough in the sky for that.

There it was again, a white gleam in the shallows, flashing like a tongue of fire. Mind racing, Inzhu put down the tunic she was washing and slid off her low, soft boots. Then, ignoring Nilûzîr and Anara’s sudden shouts of protest, she waded out into the river.

The glint of white light remained stationary, and it wasn’t anything difficult to scoop up a handful of silt with something hard and cold resting in the center. It felt heavy in Inzhu’s hand, though as she rinsed the silt away, the weight grew less.

It was, as Inzhu discovered, a ring. A large, unadorned band of untarnished, highly-polished silver that flashed and twinkled in the light. She stared at it in wonder, blinking, until Anara and Nilûzîr’s calling had her wading back to shore.

Anara glowered at her, her mouth twitching spasmodically. “What was _that_ for? The last I checked, you still can’t swim—or did I just hallucinate that time you nearly drowned in the bathhouse?”

“No, but look what I found!”

Anara and Nilûzîr, the former still bristling with worry and the latter set in a cast of mild concern, looked down to examine what Inzhu had plucked from the riverbed.

“It’s beautiful,” Nilûzîr murmured, her eyes wide. She brushed a fingertip against the ring, but pulled it back sharply, an odd look that Inzhu couldn’t quite place stealing over her face. “I can’t believe someone would just leave something like this in the river.”

There came from Anara a soft “Hmm” of agreement. Her dark eyes were fixed on the ring; they were narrowed, but not, Inzhu thought, against the light.

“Well, they probably didn’t leave it on _purpose_. Hey!” Inzhu shouted and waved her arm to the other women washing clothes on the riverbank, relaxing slightly when most of them looked up. She ignored Anara’s small sigh and went on, “Did any of you lose a ring? Silver band, no jewels?”

A couple of the women shook their heads or murmured “No.” One woman lifted her head hopefully, but a moment later a stocky woman with the pale-skinned (if slightly sunburnt) and yellow-haired look of the Éothéod splashed water at her and laughingly scolded, “Don’t you lie to her, Fríđa! You’ve never owned jewelry that fine a day in your life!”

Inzhu walked down a-ways, repeating the question, with the same results. No one had lost a ring. Most of these women took off any jewelry they had on before coming down to the river to do their washing, and as one of them pointed out, anyone who owned a ring like that likely wouldn’t be doing their own laundry. So what—

As Inzhu made it back to where she had been washing her and Anara’s clothes, she glanced down at the ring and froze.

Oblivious, Anara clapped a hand to Inzhu’s shoulder. “I suppose you should hold onto the ring in case someone comes asking after it while the clothes are drying. But if you want my advice, you should sell it; it’d fetch a lot of money.” Then, Anara at last noticed the change that had come over Inzhu’s face and asked quietly, “What?”

Inzhu frowned deeply down at the silver ring flashing like ice on her brown palm. It was the strangest thing… When she’d scooped it up out of the shallows, it was a thick, broad band, one that would have sat comfortably on the forefinger of a large man. But now, it seemed to have shrunk, so small that when she slipped it on her fourth finger to test, she found it a perfect fit.

Hastily, Inzhu removed the ring from her hand, wincing as the edge pushed roughly over her knuckle, and stared into her cousin’s face, brow furrowed. “I could have sworn this ring was bigger a minute ago.”

But Anara looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. “It doesn’t look any different to me.”

Inzhu’s eyes snapped to Nilûzîr’s face, but Nilûzîr only shook her head. “The ring hasn’t gotten any smaller, Inzhu. Maybe it just felt that way when it was still cold?”

It _was_ still cold, Inzhu wanted to say. Not the cold of ice or snow, but the cold of a cellar on a spring morning, of cool earth untouched by the sun. Her pulse throbbed around it, though her heart felt calm. She said nothing of it to either of them.

And by the time the clothes were dry, Inzhu too had forgotten that the ring had once been any larger. She and Anara were more concerned with supper as the slowly-lengthening shadows chased them back into Takand through the Traveler’s Gate. There was a hole in both of the pockets of her trousers that Inzhu had never bothered to get fixed—they were, after all, the clothes she could afford to tear or dirty—so she slipped the ring on her finger to keep from losing it. It felt right, to wear it.

Later, after she had eaten a supper of peppered mutton manti and shalgam of radishes, peppers, carrots, onions, almonds, and perhaps a little too much saffron, Inzhu went to her back garden. The plants that lived in pots in her house had already been watered (as much water as she could afford to give thm, anyways), and for what she planned to do, only the back garden would work.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Anara to take proper care of the plants in the back garden. Anara knew by now how much water each needed, and which plants needed to be preserved and which were weeds that needed to be pulled out. It wasn’t anything to do with Anara. This was something different.

Inzhu peered around her garden, hemmed in by high courtyard walls, shrouded with purple-bronze dusk, serenaded with the sounds of a city that wouldn’t go fully to sleep until hours later. The solitary stone chair in the stony part in the middle was stained with dust and age, and Inzhu couldn’t remember the last time she had sat down in it. Instead, she spied a spot at the far right corner of her garden and knelt down, digging her fingers deep into the soil.

When she did that, it felt like she was a little closer to the earth, a little closer to the roots of her plants, her livelihood, her life. Her life was dry as dust, right now. No matter how much water Inzhu or Anara gave the garden, the soil was dry and cracked again within a few hours. Inzhu’s heart ached with longing for the sweet, earthy smell of soil that wasn’t bone-parched and threatening to blow away with each strong gust of wind. She longed for soil that did not feel so dead under her hands.

Inzhu dug her hands a little deeper, and though she would not realize it until hours later, her fingertips had brushed against something softer and damper than the dust of the surface.

-0-0-0-

Another week passed without rain and with relatively few customers, though Inzhu thought the rate of customers coming through her door was perhaps a little better than it had been. But ‘a little better’ meant that she was barely breaking even, so really, it was still a burden.

The plants in the back garden were looking better than they had in over a month—the specimens in the pots, too. Anara had noticed it first, pointing out to Inzhu one morning that none of the plants in the garden had leaves turning brown around the edges anymore, and that the plants inside, creepers and tall valerian and broad ferns and squat bushes alike, seemed especially healthy and lustrous. Inzhu hadn’t realized it until Anara pointed out, until she smelled their sweet, sharp perfume in the air, stronger than ever. Even the delicate plants that had grown from the seeds that southern merchant had given her were thriving, and her chalky blue anemones and apple-fragrant sweetbriar were doing better than they ever had. Inzhu was happy, of course, but what she felt most keenly was a dull stab of relief that she wouldn’t have to turn any customer away on account of a plant they were asking after having died.

Though Anara’s extended presence in Inzhu’s house (really, it was Anara’s house, too, though she was away so often that Inzhu didn’t think of it in those terms most of the time) represented a strain on their income—Anara being home meant Anara couldn’t find any work, which meant Anara had no money coming in to contribute to taxes and other expenses—Inzhu could hardly deny she liked having her company. When Anara was gone, Inzhu was alone. Nilûzîr came by often enough—at least, Nilûzîr came by often enough when her business wasn’t as busy as it was now—and there were her customers, some of whom Inzhu was friendly with, but her days were mostly occupied with her plants. And her plants, for all that they were her life, well. If she spoke to them, they would never answer her.

It was always with mixed feelings that she bid her cousin good luck when Anara found a caravan willing to take her on as a guard.

“Dorwinion?” Inzhu shut her hefty pharmacopoeia—she’d had an oddly high number of customers lately asking for herbal cures for common ailments who didn’t know which combination of herbs were needed for the mix—and stared up at Anara with something close to dismay on her face. “You’re really going to Dorwinion?”

Anara shrugged. She was kitted out completely now, not the light smattering of armoring she’d worn down to the river, and her saber swung slightly at her hip as she turned to face the door. “I need the work, Inzhu; you know that. The caravan leader offered me good money, _and_ he didn’t think anything of a woman guarding his wares.”

“But… But there are _Elves_ in Dorwinion,” Inzhu said lamely.

Anara shrugged again, though the slight stiffening of her back at least reassured Inzhu that she wasn’t being completely flippant about it. “I’ll be alright, Inzhu. I’m told the Elves don’t go into the city; when they want wine, they send a human agent to collect it.”

Inzhu nodded, still feeling a little faint. “Alright. How… How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

“We’re not entirely sure. It depends on the weather, and what route the caravan leader decides to take; him and some of the other merchants in the caravan have been arguing about it. They are planning to come right back, so at least there’s that. Probably three months, at the most; I should be back by the middle of autumn at the very latest.”

And Inzhu believed her, or at least she wanted to. Ever since Anara had first taken up work as a mercenary, after she’d quit her job as a city guard (for reasons she _still_ didn’t see fit to share), the longest she’d ever been gone was a little over a year and a half, when she followed a caravan to Minas Anor and was stranded in the city for nearly a month after arriving. (The fact that Gondor had shown itself rather less friendly to outsiders since the fall of Minas Ithil—the doings of Mordor were known even in Takand, where the great watched the south warily—was a mingled source of frustration and relief.)

“Good luck, then.”

She didn’t look into Anara’s face when her cousin reached forward to hug her, though she slid her arms around Anara’s armored back and pressed her forehead to her shoulder, breathing in the scent of leather.

When she was alone, she left her pharmacopoeia to the wayside and went to the garden. Surrounded by brown turning to green, by plants and bushes and a couple of small trees that seemed brighter and lovelier than they ever had to her memory, Inzhu delved her hands into the soil. It was warm and welcoming and faintly alive, and after a few minutes passed in silence, Inzhu’s throbbing heart calmed.

-0-0-0-

Inzhu’s plants were her comfort and her company in her solitude. They would never speak back if she spoke to them—she wasn’t always so certain if that was because plants lacked voices, or if it was that she did not have the ears to hear them, especially not now—but they were alive, in their way. Her home was full of living things, even when she was the only person under its roof. Inzhu was surrounded by her life at all times, by green leaves and riotous blooms and the sweet, sharp scent of things that grew. She was surrounded by her life, and it took the worst of the edge off of her loneliness.

(She was having dreams, lately. Inzhu couldn’t remember what they were, only that that sweet, sharp scent had followed her into them, and that she always woke up with her heart racing sickeningly, and beads of sweat trembling on her forehead. She would lie awake in the dark, her gaze locked on the ceiling of her bedroom. She kept expecting to hear noise, but the only noise that came was her own panting breaths. She could never remember what had been the content of these dreams, could never remember whether they had frightened or excited her. Inzhu always managed to get back to sleep, and she had always half-forgotten the experience by morning, and wholly forgotten the disquiet that had gripped her.)

Everyone who walked through her door these days was telling her how wonderful her plants looked and smelled, how extraordinary it was that she could keep them so lush and healthy in this drought. Someone remarked that they could smell a clean, flowery scent even before entering her house. The man who monitored usage of the nearby well said that if he didn’t know better, he’d swear Inzhu was taking more than the amount of water rationed to her; he was astonished to discover that she wasn’t bringing water up from the river. On her way back from the well one morning, Inzhu had been stopped by the local baker she bought baursak from and asked if she was wearing a new perfume.

These things filled Inzhu with a sharp-edged hope she could scarcely contain. For all that there had been no rain and a shroud of heat blanketed Takand like some transparent funeral pall, she was thriving. Her life was thriving. She didn’t know why, but she’d take it.

“Here is the mix you asked for, Master Dona.” Inzhu handed the small packet down to the Dwarf, smiling politely and hoping dimly that it wasn’t too obvious that she couldn’t tell if her customer was male or female. The Dwarves of Takand did little to nothing to differentiate themselves by sex—not that Inzhu had any idea if Dwarves living outside of Takand were any different—but all answered to ‘Master’ without any protest.

“Thank you kindly, Master Inzhu.” And it hit Inzhu like a brick to the face that Dwarves seemed to have the same difficulty with Men. “My usual apothecary is away visiting family in the Iron Hills, and her apprentices—“ Dona’s bearded face twisted in a light scowl “—don’t take direction very well.”

Apprentices. Should Inzhu try taking on an apprentice, someone to keep the business afloat and her in good health when she was old and gray? Not now. Now, she couldn’t afford to pay for a child’s upkeep (not that Inzhu was especially keen to take on a _young_ child), and would likely have had to send them home to their parents within a few months. Maybe later. But not now. Inzhu had her plants, and a promise that Anara would be back in a few months. She didn’t need an apprentice just now.

“Well, I hope this is to your liking.” As Inzhu began to write in her receipt book, she became aware of Dona staring intently at her, so intently that she felt her skin start to prickle and burn under the scrutiny. But she did not show herself flighty to her customers, so she finished writing in her receipt book and cut out Dona’s copy with her scissors. “Will that be all for you?”

Dona nodded distractedly. Their jet-black eyes were fixed on Inzhu’s hand. “Just one question. Your ring…”

Inzhu blinked at Dona blankly, for a long moment utterly bewildered. Then, she remembered the ring. It fit so well, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had taken it off. It was just very easy to forget it was there, like it was just part of her finger and had always been there. She must have forgotten about it again, today.

Inzhu rolled the ring in her other hand, smiling quietly at the way it rolled smoothly over her skin. “A silver ring I found in the river, Master Dona. Just a trifle, really.”

“Just a trifle?!” Dona exclaimed, their booming laugh of incredulity reverberating in the room. “I think it’s rather more than _that_.”

Now, Inzhu found herself genuinely quite confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Master Inzhu, that that ring is not made of silver. I am no smith myself, but if you have ever seen it yourself, then it does not take a trained eye to distinguish silver from mithril. That ring is equal to the value of your house and that of your neighbors’ together.”

“I-I had no idea,” Inzhu stammered, a cold wave of shock sweeping over her. Truth be told, the name ‘mithril’ was unfamiliar to her; she had never been much for metallurgy. But given the context, it was clearly a metal much more valuable than silver—and more so than gold, too, if Dona’s assessment held water. To think that she had been wearing something like that on her hand this whole time…

Dona nodded sagely. “Few in this part of the world have ever laid eyes on mithril; I’m hardly surprised you would mistake it for silver, though it is much finer. Well—“ They started towards the door with their pouch of herbs and receipt “—if someone was careless enough to _lose_ such a treasure, it was a lucky find for you! If you ever desire to sell it, come find me. I’ll make sure you’re given a fair value.”

Inzhu nodded and murmured some polite farewell, but she couldn’t remember a word of it later.

Sell the ring?

It was what Anara had suggested when first Inzhu had found it, and though Inzhu had not entertained such thoughts at the time, she’d not responded to the suggestion with any sort of anger. Now, though, she felt a slow wave of anger burn in the pit of her stomach at the thought. Sell the ring? No. It wasn’t even how valuable it was, or the fact that Inzhu had never owned anything so fine before. It was just… hers. That was all.

Behind her, the vines and ferns and tall valerian grew, slowly, but they grew.

-0-0-0-

Inzhu had stopped counting the number of people who came through the door looking for herbs or flowers. She wasn’t certain just when she had done so, when she had stopped caring whether or not she had any customers in a given day at all. She always seemed to have enough money—no danger of not having enough for taxes these days—so Inzhu could only assume that however many people came walking through her door, it was enough to sustain the business.

She had stopped counting the number of people who came through the door. She found it didn’t matter to her nearly as much as it used to.

Inzhu buried her hands in the earth of her garden with every spare moment she had that wasn’t devoted to her own body’s basic needs. Caring for her plants had always been a welcome activity, but now it filled her with a buoyant joy she had never really experienced before. She combed every inch of the garden for weeds, checked the plants in the pots in her house for insects or any signs of rot, smiled so broadly she thought her face might split when she came out one morning and found the garden practically swarming with gorgeous blue gossamer-winged butterflies.

When people came into her house, they told her that the clean, flowery scent that had before been confined to her house and the neighboring houses had spread to the whole street. It was so strong, they said, that it chased all the other smells of the city away, and it was like living in a meadow in the middle of a forest, far from civilization. Some said it with looks of something close to bliss on their faces. And others, when they said it, had an expression on their face that almost seemed like concern—an expression that deepened when they looked around in the public space of Inzhu’s home.

Honestly, Inzhu barely registered either the bliss or the concern. It didn’t really matter that much to her, what her customers said, so long as they paid for her goods and left quickly after being paid, leaving her alone with her garden. If they didn’t understand how happy she was, if they begrudged her her happiness because something about it _unsettled_ them, then why on earth should she care for their opinions? They had what they wanted from her, and they could leave, and go to a place that unsettled them less.

Sometimes, her stomach grumbled at her while she worked. Many times, her vision blurred with sweat and her hands grew slick even as they worked in the leaves and the stems and the soil. Her back and shoulders would ache from how long she had spent hunched over on her knees, and those knees felt so numb they could have belonged to a corpse.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Inzhu was worried about that. It was a small voice growing smaller with each passing day, and with each passing day, Inzhu remembered less and less why she should be worried. She fed her sweat to the earth, a little more water for the soil, though it scarcely needed it—the soil was cool and damp and alive beneath her skin. She fed her hunger to the earth, and her garden waxed in beauty.

-0-0-0-

“Inzhu? Inzhu, are you here?”

It was a deep-rooted irritation to have to be dragged away from her garden when she was tending to it, even to attend to a customer. They didn’t understand how valuable what they were walking away with was. All they knew was that this or that would treat their headaches, their back pain, their insomnia, their arthritis, and that was all they cared to know. They neither knew nor cared to know just how long it took a plant to grow from a seed to maturity, let alone how long it took to grow the parts they were after. The leaves they brewed in tea or the flower petals they chewed had been months in the making; gone in a flash, and _none_ of them understood what a loss that was, or cared to.

Inzhu still put on the best face she could to her customers, of course. She always seemed to have enough money, but there was no sense in alienating the people who provided her with the means to care for her plants _and_ buy new ones. She was thinking of buying some pots and putting them in the sunny spot in her bedroom. Maybe the other bedroom, too. It stood empty, after all; might as well put it to good use. Couldn’t do any of that without money.

Putting on a good face to her customers didn’t always mean she noticed immediately when they entered her home. She got lost in her life, sometimes, got lost in the indescribable beauty of the green. But surely they would understand. The green was so lovely, and how many tales did you hear of artisans getting lost in _their_ work? Dozens? Hundreds? They would understand—and what did they care, really, so long as she gave them what they came in for?

“Inzhu?”

The voice came again, a little closer this time, and no longer could Inzhu pretend she hadn’t heard. With a gusty sigh of great reluctance, Inzhu got to her feet and started back towards the house, only thinking to wipe the sweat from her face when it started to drip into her eyes.

She saw the intruder before the intruder saw her. It was Nilûzîr, and Inzhu felt an inexplicable pang at the sight of her, though she quashed it soon enough. Nilûzîr stared around the interior of the house with an unflattering look of shock on her face. Her eyes were wide and her hooked nose was wrinkled as if against an undesirable smell. She pressed a hand to her mouth as she looked around her again.

Personally, Inzhu didn’t care for that attitude. There was only one thing Nilûzîr could have seen that would provoke a response, and Inzhu didn’t care for those who didn’t appreciate the beauty of the green. But perhaps Nilûzîr only needed time to grow accustomed to it. It _had_ been a long time since she last visited, after all.

(And Inzhu hadn’t visited her. The thought rattled in the back of her mind, unhinged and unmoored, until it let out a wheezing cry and died for lack of air.)

At last, Inzhu stepped back through the open door into her house. The green smell followed her here, met by all the plants in her pots, so it wasn’t as much of a sacrifice to leave the garden as it could have been. “Hello, Nilûzîr,” she said softly.

“Is that you, Inzhu? You sound—“ All of this came before Nilûzîr turned to face her. When Nilûzîr’s gray eyes (they seemed brighter and keener now, like twin points of light, though Inzhu had no idea why) met Inzhu’s brown ones, they widened, and speech failed her.

Nilûzîr just kept on staring, her eyes huge in her face, and the silence that stood between them was thick and close. Inzhu shifted her weight, beginning to feel a little discomfited by all the staring. “Was there something you wanted?” she asked uncomfortably.

“Yes,” Nilûzîr said faintly. “There was something I wanted.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I wanted to _see_ you, Inzhu,” and there was something so aching in Nilûzîr’s voice that Inzhu turned away. “I know I don’t come here as often as I used to; I’m always busy with work and I know that isn’t a good excuse to go so long without visiting, but…” She broke off and swallowed audibly. “I’ve… I’ve been hearing things, Inzhu. I didn’t believe them at first—you know how rumors are—but I kept hearing them. I kept hearing them, and I was hearing them more and more.”

Inzhu raised an eyebrow at her. “And what were you hearing?”

Nilûzîr’s face fell. “Don’t you know?”

“No, but I doubt it’s anything really worth worrying about.” Inzhu brushed past her to inspect her sweetbriar; as she did so, she felt Nilûzîr’s hand brush against her shoulder, only to jerk back as if burned. The sweetbriar looked well; its flowers were broader than ever, its leaves shone in the light as if glistening with dew, and its apple fragrance never failed to banish any shadow from her heart. She looked back at Nilûzîr and smiled. “As you say, the city is always growing rumors. We shouldn’t pay them any mind.”

Nilûzîr didn’t return her smile. Instead, she closed the gap between them and took Inzhu’s chin in her hand to tip her head up. She searched her face with those terrible bright eyes, her jaw tightening with each moment that passed. “Sweetheart, are you feeling alright?” she asked gently.

Inzhu shifted slightly and Nilûzîr took her hand away. “I am quite well, Nilûzîr.” She eyed the other woman, frowning slightly. “I think you wanted to talk…”

Another long silence, charged and tingling. A wagon rolled by outside, its wheels rattling on the cobblestones, almost unbearably loudly. Then, Nilûzîr nodded. “Yes, I wanted to talk. I would like to speak with you very much.”

They moved to Inzhu’s kitchen, their footfalls on the terra cotta tiles oddly muted. Nilûzîr poured water from a pitcher into an earthenware cup which she pressed into Inzhu’s hand, frowning at her until she accepted it, and not taking her eyes off of her until she took a sip. And to be perfectly honest, that Inzhu did more to make Nilûzîr stop looking at her with those bright eyes than because she was actually thirsty.

Considering how long it had been since Nilûzîr had last come here (Inzhu  couldn’t remember just how long it had been; the number of days stretched back into shadow), the conversation felt rather… abbreviated.

“Have you heard anything from Anara?” Nilûzîr asked her. “Has she sent you any letters? I imagine she’s at least told you what day she expects to be back.”

For a long moment, Inzhu just stared at her blankly, her mind trying to work, to connect a name with a face. “Anara?” she asked at last, and flinched away from the stare Nilûzîr fixed her in. “Oh, I…… I’m not sure. I haven’t been to the postal office in a while. I’ve been busy,” she added, when Nilûzîr’s arched eyebrows shot up in obvious skepticism.

“I… see.” Inzhu half-wondered if Nilûzîr would manage to burn holes through the table with that intense stare of hers, but so long as that stare wasn’t scouring her face, Inzhu couldn’t complain.

There was little said after that, though Nilûzîr was suddenly very interested in how much Inzhu was eating, and whether, between attending to customers and to her garden, she had enough time to rest. Yes, yes, her needs were met, and _really_ , Inzhu thought but did not say, the most important thing was her plants, her life. They were thriving. They were thriving more than ever. What did the rest matter?

Nilûzîr swept to her feet in a swish of her cotton skirt and her long black hair. She walked swiftly around the table as if to go, but then she stopped, and knelt by the cushion on which Inzhu still sat. Her hand felt warm on Inzhu’s shoulder, a sticky, cloying warmth that made Inzhu long for the sun and the feeling of sun-warmed leaves beneath her skin. “I can’t stay,” she apologized, face taut. “I have so many commissions and work orders; even with my assistants helping, there’s never enough hours in the day. But the moment I Have enough time to come see you, I will. I promise you that, Inzhu.” Her words carried an odd weight to them, like the foundations of the earth shifting ever so slightly.

Inzhu nodded, and she left. Inzhu wasn’t certain whether to be happy or not, that she believed her.

-0-0-0-

After that, Inzhu couldn’t remember laying eyes on another person until the old woman came. Certainly, she still left her house to draw water from the well, but the streets always seemed empty of people when she walked them, no matter what time of day it was. Perhaps they were off somewhere else in the city. Perhaps there was a festival at the central market or the Great Square at the feet of the palace, and she’d forgotten it. That could very well be it.

She didn’t remember hearing the door open. She didn’t remember hearing anyone announce themselves at the threshold. She was kneeling over one of her pots, checking the soil and the base, when a shadow fell over her. Even then, she didn’t notice the shadow immediately. Only when she was inspecting a leaf and found she didn’t have enough light to see by did she look up. For a moment she thought she’d worked until dusk again and forgotten about the time, but she looked to her right and her field of vision was filled with blue.

Inzhu scrambled to her feet, not bothering to dust off her hands; she wasn’t going to offer to shake with someone who would sneak in like this. _But she is a customer_ , Inzhu reminded herself, _or might be._ So she would be polite.

It wasn’t until much later that Inzhu would really be able to tell what the old woman looked like. Her features were… difficult to focus on. What really stood out to her at the time was the blue shawl she had swathed herself with, and her staff, a tall staff of gray wood, fashioned so that a flashing blue crystal sat in a “cage” of wooden gray tendrils. She remembered being hopeful upon sighting the richness of the color of the long shawl draped over the woman’s head. Blue dye was prohibitively expensive, especially the rich blue of the shawl. Anyone who could wear such a color typically had plenty of money to spend on _whatever_ took their fancy.

Inzhu nodded to the old woman in what she hoped successfully came across as politeness. “Good day, Mistress. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“This is an interesting place,” the old woman remarked, and it seemed for all the world as if she’d not heard a word Inzhu said to her. She had the faintly cracked voice Inzhu associated with old age, but there was a power in it that made the air crackle, like the low rumble in the sky before a thunderstorm. She tapped her staff against the floor and reached to brush her hand against a vine.

Inzhu bristled at the intrusion—how dare this woman touch one of her plants without permission, customer or no customer?—but she kept her silence. There was something making her keep her silence. Her tongue felt as though weighted down with stones.

The woman’s eyes fixed on Inzhu’s face, and suddenly Inzhu felt as though she was burning. It was brief, and lasted only as long as it took for the woman to blink, but she had the powerful feeling of her skin starting to smoke and blister beneath a scrutinizing gaze, and it was all she could do not to scream.

“I will be back,” the old woman told her. “I have business in this city, and not just here. This is an interesting place, child. I will have to learn more about it.”

Inzhu did not remember when she left. There was only the sudden absence, and her sinking down to the ground as her knees seemed to lose all strength.

-0-0-0-

She found herself watching for the old woman’s return, to the point that it was cutting into the time she spent tending to her plants. Every flash of blue outside sent an ill-defined panic coursing through her. Every rhythmic strike of anything against stone—a hammer, hooves, someone’s walking stick became the old woman walking down the street towards her front door in Inzhu’s mind.

There was some calm to be found in tending to her garden, to her potted plants. She could delve her hands into the soil, test the plants for any sign of thirst, and she would forget her fears for a time. Forget the old woman, forget the drought, forget anything and everything that went on outside of her house. It was as if the interloper did not exist, as if she truly didn’t matter anymore.

But any moment she wasn’t tending to her life, she found her ears pricked and her eyes searching the periphery for the slightest hint of a blue shawl.

She didn’t even know why she was so frightened. The old woman hadn’t _done_ anything to her. The fear was still there though, coiled around with the tenacious strength of a strangling vine. It just wouldn’t leave her alone.

-0-0-0-

It happened again the same way it had happened the first time, more or less. Inzhu never heard the door opening. She never heard footsteps on the threshold. She never heard the hard, clear strike of a wooden staff against terra cotta tiles. There was nothing to warn her that she was not alone. She looked up from one of her ferns to have her vision filled with rich blue.

Inzhu lurched back, falling on her back with a thud. She was staring up into the old woman’s face, and from the cowl she had made of her voluminous shawl, only her eyes were visible: dark, bright as beacons in the blackest night, keen as well-honed knives. Never again would Inzhu understand what was so terrible about Nilûzîr’s eyes, bright and piercing as they might be, when held up against these.

Silence reigned. The old woman said nothing to Inzhu, and Inzhu said nothing to the old woman. The sounds of the outside world seemed to have vanished, leaving them with only the damp heat of Inzhu’s house.

Eventually, Inzhu remembered her manners (regardless of whether or not the old woman actually deserved politeness) and rose unsteadily to her feet. “How has your business here gone?” she asked, and cared not for how stilted her voice sounded, even to her own ears.

The old woman shrugged, striking her staff against the floor. “Productive. The business I came here for is nearly concluded.” She looked around her and sighed. It struck Inzhu then that the old woman was scarcely any taller than she was; when she was on the ground and the old woman standing above her, she had seemed to loom all the way to the ceiling. “But there is still the matter of this place.” She glanced sharply in Inzhu’s direction. “And you.”

There was little in the world Inzhu liked less than the idea of the old woman staying within the walls of her house for a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. “If you’re not interested in buying something, there can’t be anything _here_ that interests you.”

“Oh?” the old woman asked quizzically. “And why not?”

Inzhu stared desperately, trying to reach for something, anything she could say that would make the intruder _leave_. There had to be something. If she wasn’t interested in buying, what was she here for? But the words stuck in her throat. And deep down, something was telling her that it would be no use to speak the words, however truthful they might be. Something was telling her that the woman would stay as long as she wished to, no matter what she said to her, and would only leave when she saw fit to leave.

It was as if her long moment of indecision had been filled with speech. The old woman took a step forwards, and Inzhu wanted to move back, but found herself rooted to the ground. “Tell me, child.” Her voice was like the crack of a whip in still air, though there was nothing about her tone that Inzhu could have pointed out as unpleasant. “Do you notice nothing strange about this place?”

“No.” There was no need to look around her, and yet Inzhu still had to fight to keep from turning her gaze from the intruder. “There is nothing strange about my house.” Sharply, she asked, “Why would you think there was anything strange?”

“It’s got its hooks in, then,” the old woman muttered to herself, and seemed in no hurry to explain what she meant by that. “Child, what is your name?” she asked in a more normal tone.

 _Don’t tell her your name!_ “………Inzhu.”

The old woman smiled—meant to be reassuring, perhaps, but there was something false about it, and how could any smile seem genuine when accompanied by those terrible eyes? “Mistress Inzhu, why don’t we talk? I am an old woman, and I would like a rest and some company to share it with. Your kitchen, perhaps?”

Inzhu wanted nothing less than she wanted to lead this old woman swathed in blue to her kitchen. Her legs worked mechanically, like a puppet being made to walk by an exceptionally inexpert puppeteer, as she led the old woman to the kitchen. Blue shawl and skirt swished behind her like the whispering of dozens of voices, the sharp clack of a staff against tiles banishing them all of the moment in which the clack reverberated through the still air. The hairs on the back of Inzhu’s neck stood on end as she strained for the sound of breathing—but it did not come.

What little control Inzhu had over her body was devoted to resisting the urge that had implanted itself into her mind to pour the old woman some water and offer her food. It would have been polite to do this for a guest. It would have been rude not to do this for someone who was a guest. This woman was not a guest. She could expect none of the pleasantries of hospitality from her unwilling host.

“Tell me, Mistress Inzhu,” the old woman said, nearly before they had both sat down. “Do you live here alone?”

“I—yes.”

Just barely past their brightness, Inzhu perceived the woman’s eyes narrowing. “Really? This house seems a touch large for one person, by Takand’s standards.”

“I live here alone,” Inzhu insisted.

The old woman tapped her fingernail (clean and well-trimmed, shockingly enough; for some reason, Inzhu had expected something more like a talon) against the staff she had laid out on her lap. “No siblings?”

“No.”

“No friends who share this house with you?”

“No.”

There came a tilt of the blue-cowled head. “No husband?”

Inzhu flinched. “ _No_ ,” she snapped.

“Hmm.” The woman drummed her fingernails against the table now, tapping out a staccato rhythm. “No one close to you at all?”

A face or two swam through Inzhu’s mind, but it was not to them that her heart turned. “I have my garden,” she said softly. “I care for the things that grow in the earth. What else do I need?”

Inzhu could scarcely tell, but she thought the old woman was looking at her with something close to sadness. It should have been reassuring, that the intruder could feel something so normal as ordinary sadness. It should have diminished her to the point of making her somewhat _manageable_ , at least. It did none of these things. It changed nothing at all. “And it is admirable to care for things that grow,” she said, very gently. “It’s perfectly admirable. But no one born under the sun was ever meant to spend their whole lives doing only one thing. And no one was ever meant to spend their lives completely alone.”

Inzhu never got the chance to retort.

The front door slammed shut, and a voice called out, “Inzhu? Inzhu, are you here? I need to talk to you!”

“Not as alone as I thought,” the old woman murmured.

It was like climbing over a wall: on one side, Inzhu knew nothing, but on the other side, all the memories were pent up, and she could remember again. At least a little. The woman the voice belonged to was Nilûzîr the tailor, and everything else was fuzzy, but she remembered that much.

There was a flash of pink cloth, and Nilûzîr was standing at the threshold into the kitchen, panting slightly and holding a bundle of envelopes in her hand. “Inzhu, I’ve been to the postal office; it took some doing, but they gave me your—“ Her eyes drifted to the old woman, and she went very quiet, and very still.

For her part, the old woman smiled up at Nilûzîr in a way that could have been called grandmotherly, if not for everything else about her. “Hello, dear.”

Nilûzîr swept across the room and sat down close by Inzhu. “Who are you?” she asked sharply.

“My name is Zhuldyz, young lady. I believe we start introductions in this land by offering our own name first.”

Inzhu thought irritably that Zhuldyz had not offered her own name before forcing Inzhu to give _hers_ , and Nilûzîr seemed to have found another point of issue. “I asked who you were—“ her voice sharpened to honed steel “—not what your name is.”

Zhuldyz laughed, hiding her teeth behind her hand. “Why, young lady, I am just an old woman, come to call upon this young woman.”

Nilûzîr’s eyes were still unsettlingly bright and keen, but when they were focused upon something else, they felt to Inzhu like a shield of adamant. “’Just an old woman?’” Nilûzîr echoed tartly. “I very much doubt that.” She turned to Inzhu, taking hold of her shoulders. Even turned on her, those eyes seemed less terrible than the eyes of Zhuldyz. “Inzhu.” Her voice was slightly choked. “What did this woman say to you to make you accept her into your home? What has she done?”

“I believe,” Zhuldyz called from the far end of the table, and Nilûzîr’s face paled ever so slightly as she went on, “that it is also the custom in this land not to talk about someone like they aren’t there, when they quite clearly _are_. What I am _trying_ to do is to alert your friend to the danger she is currently in. If you care for her, you might try _helping_ me, rather than what you’re doing right now.”

Nilûzîr opened her mouth, but Inzhu cut her off. “Danger?” She scowled at Zhuldyz. “Is that supposed to be a _threat_?”

“No, child, a warning, one that I hope you will take in the spirit it was intended.” She fixed her eyes on Nilûzîr, and suddenly it was as though Inzhu was just made of air—so much for not talking about someone like they weren’t in the room. “You know there’s something wrong.” Inzhu watched warily as Nilûzîr gritted her teeth and nodded. “I can see it. You can see it. She can’t. But I think you know how to _make_ her see it.”

Nilûzîr stared at Zhuldyz, her face as hard and still as stone.

Meanwhile, Inzhu had eyes for Nilûzîr only. She stared at her imploringly, her heart starting to pound in her chest. “Nilûzîr, what is going on?” Her voice cracked. “Tell her to go away. She won’t listen to me, but maybe…”

But whatever Inzhu was hoping Nilûzîr might do for her, it was not to be. Slowly, her too-bright eyes flickering with something close to panic, Nilûzîr shook her head. “I’m sorry, Inzhu,” she said in a hushed voice. Slightly choked. “But there is something wrong. And I need you to see it.”

She took something from one of her skirt pockets, something that flashed and glimmered like sunlight in the half-lit kitchen: a small hand mirror, a sheet of glass with a wooden back. Nilûzîr caught one of Inzhu’s shoulders in her hand and held the mirror up to eye level with the other. “Inzhu—“ her voice was horribly gentle “—I need you to look into this.”

Inzhu didn’t, at first. This whole day had been rather more than she was willing to deal with, and she failed to see why she had to look into any mirror, even one furnished by someone she knew, who was exhibiting apparent concern for her well-being. She would have liked nothing better than to send both of them away from her house, so she could be alone with her plants again, and go back to caring for them. That was all she wanted.

Her eyes strayed to the mirror rather by accident. When she saw what was reflected there, she couldn’t take her eyes away.

It took a long time, entirely too long, to recognize the face Inzhu saw reflected in the mirror. It was red and blistered, streaked with dirt and peeling skin. Cheekbones stood out gauntly, the cheeks hollow pits that receded back far further than they ever should have. The eyes that met Inzhu’s were bloodshot and swollen from lack of sleep.

“What…”

Nilûzîr was silent. Zhuldyz was not. “You see it now, don’t you?” she murmured. “You see part of it, at least. But don’t stop there. Take a good look at your house, child, and tell me if anything seems wrong to you.”

Inzhu was up on her feet before Nilûzîr could do anything asides from put a hand to her arm to try to stop her, and not quick enough to put out a strong grip. Inzhu walked unsteadily back down the hall to the main room, noticing for the first time how cluttered the hallway was with potted plants. She couldn’t remember having so many before. She couldn’t remember having bought the pots, or the seeds, or the potting soil. She couldn’t remember where any of this had _come_ from.

When she reached the main room, she couldn’t restrain a gasp. There were so many pots here that there was only a few narrow paths between them to walk through. The plants contained within were lush and green, and far, far larger than they should have been. Vines spilled from their pots onto the floor, crisscrossing and snaking through each other until they formed knots thicker than Inzhu’s fist, and fairly hid the floor on which they lied from view. The valerian plants brushed the ceiling now; the pot in which they grew was cracked, and thick, knotted roots spilled out from the gaps. The sweet, sharp smell of plant life was so thick that Inzhu’s head spun and her vision swam.

She could just barely see past the clusters of vegetation to the back garden. It looked more like the descriptions she’d heard of jungles than it did like a garden.

“Oh, my,” she whimpered, bringing her (dirty, _filthy,_ crusted with dirt that smelled of rotting vegetation and sweat) hands to her mouth. “Oh, my. When did this…”

There came the pelting of footsteps, and the sharp, crisp clack of a staff on tiles. Nilûzîr drew close to Inzhu’s side again as Zhuldyz entered the room. Her eyes were brighter and more terrible than ever, but Inzhu found herself staring into them, transfixed. “Do you see it now?”

Inzhu’s breath came out in short, shallow gasps gulping for air in the too-humid room. “What… what…”

“That’s an interesting ring you’re wearing,” Zhuldyz said in a low voice, her eyes fixed on Inzhu’s hand. “I wonder just where you found it.”

Another thing that didn’t make sense in a day full of things that didn’t make sense. Inzhu stared incredulously at her, even as she began to sway slightly from side to side. “What _ring_?”

“Inzhu.” Nilûzîr’s voice was hushed with a strangled disbelief. “The ring you found in the river. The ring you’re wearing on your hand.”

Slowly, like the dripping of water from the edge of a leaf, Inzhu looked down to her hand, and spotted the flash of silver—no, mithril—for the first time in what she was beginning to suspect was a very long time. “Oh,” she said, her voice sounding far-away even to her own ears. “Oh, this? It’s just… just a trifle. I found it in the river.”

Zhuldyz held out a hand. “May I see it? I would like to examine it.”

Inzhu ground her teeth, a flash of anger striking in her chest like lightning. “ _No_. It’s mine; you can’t just take it for yourself. Don’t you think you’ve knocked run roughshod over enough boundaries for one day?”

The old woman raised an eyebrow. “But as you said, it’s just a trifle. What harm does it do to let me examine it; I will return it to you afterwards, if you wish it.” Her face settled into a frown. “And think, child, about when all of this started. Think very hard about that.”

Nilûzîr was plucking at her sleeve with her fingertips, and Inzhu’s heart was racing in her chest. There was something screaming in the back of her mind, some truth just out of her grasp.

Of all the things she did that day, clutching at the ring with her shaking fingers was the only thing she was certain she’d done entirely of her own will. Though she did not even need to look down at her hands to know how little spare flesh was left on them, she found the ring painfully tight when she tried to remove it. She had to tug and pull at it, hissing in pain when it caught on her knuckle for what felt like an agonizing eternity.

But then, it was off, and the world tilted on its axis.

Someone was saying something in a tight, loud voice, but Inzhu heard none of it. Her eyes were filled with darkness, and she knew no more.

-0-0-0-

That Inzhu knew she was asleep was little consolation, given what confronted her in sleep. Her fingers and her toes erupted in roots and leaves that delved into the earth and clutched all the more tightly when she tried to tear her body away from the ground. Her veins were tinted green, and whatever flowed through them, Inzhu knew it wasn’t blood. She opened her mouth, but flowers burst through them, drowning out her screams. She knew she was asleep. It didn’t help.

These were the images that haunted her dreams, punctured by only one scene of different tenor.

She was alone in a dark, dusty room. A pale light poured through far-away windows, too bright for anything outside of them to be made out. Before her was a table. The only thing on the table was a wooden box filled with plain, unadorned rings. There were many of gold and silver, and some of bronze and copper, a few of the bright, bright silver that might have been mithril.

Inzhu’s hand stretched towards the box of its own accord, but a hand emerged from the shadows to guide hers away: warm and brown and far larger than her own. “No. Those are not for you.”

-0-0-0-

Inzhu knew she was regaining consciousness when she began to feel every muscle in her body screaming at her. No matter what happened in her dreams, there was only the phantom-pain you associated with dreams, except it didn’t wake Inzhu up as it would have at any other time. This was too sharp, too settled, too pervasive to be the phantom-pain of her dreams. Given how thoroughly it had wormed its way into her bones, she wished it was.

Her eyes were confronted first with a fuzzy haze she couldn’t seem to make resolve itself to anything solid. All around her was silence; Inzhu thought she might have heard the muffled noises of a city at work, but they were so faint they might as well have been miles away—they were meaningless, and couldn’t help her get her bearings.

She tried to lift her hand to her face, and found that her arm wouldn’t work. Inzhu’s heart began to pound at that—was she restrained? Why would she be restrained? Pounding heart resolved into gasping breaths that threatened to gag her, until she managed to lift her arm at last, and found it was no rope or leather bond that restrained her, only the weakness of her own body. (Personally, Inzhu would have preferred the explanation where she had been tied down to whatever she was lying on—presumably a bed. That would have meant that she might have been well enough to get up and walk, instead of what the weakness of her arm all-too-clearly implied.)

Her arm was fuzzy to her eyes. Why it managed to surprise her, she didn’t know, but the fuzziness of her arm surprised her. As Inzhu’s eyes slowly began to clear, it struck her that she couldn’t smell dirt, or sweat, or rotting vegetation. Any lingering panic from the thought that she might have been bound to the bed gave way to a wave of relief that crashed over her so heavily Inzhu thought she might drown in it. Sweet though the drowning might have been, Inzhu preferred the idea of seeing the world clearly again, for she knew this much at least: she hadn’t seen the world as it was in a very long time.

Her arm—her left, it was her left—didn’t look like the left arm she remembered having. The left arm she remembered having had been smooth and ochre-brown, the top of the arm lined with fine black hair. There had been spare flesh on that arm—not much, since she didn’t have Anara’s hard muscles or the soft rolls of flesh you saw on a noblewoman who could afford to eat enough to produce them, but she’d not been so skinny that you could pick out her bone structure at a glance. There was a crescent-shaped scar on her forearm near her elbow, from where Inzhu had fallen on a sharp stone as a child.

There was more hair now, and her skin was peeling in places; she almost lost sight of the white scar on her forearm thanks to that peeling skin. Where before Inzhu had had a reasonable amount of spare flesh on her arm, now there was practically none. With a slowness that seemed absolutely agonizing, she began to remember the sight of her face in Nilûzîr’s hand mirror.

It wasn’t surprising anymore.

Well, the basic reality of the situation wasn’t surprising to her anymore. She still didn’t know why this had to happen at all.

Before Inzhu could begin to dwell too much on her questions, there was the faint pattering of footfalls at the door, and a flash of green. There was Nilûzîr in the doorway, looking lovelier than Inzhu had ever seen her, though that might have been due in part to the faint aureole that shone around her until Inzhu blinked her bleary eyes, and it was gone again. Her gray eyes didn’t shine like two points of light anymore. They didn’t burn or pierce Inzhu’s skin like knives; she didn’t look into them and feel as though those eyes could see everything she attempted to conceal. They just looked very warm, very welcome, and slightly wet.

“Inzhu.” Nilûzîr stumbled forward until she was kneeling by the bed, clutching Inzhu’s hand in her own (warm, wonderfully warm; not the warmth of the sun or the dry heat, but the warmth of live flesh with blood flowing beneath the skin, the warmth of a living person who could hold her and love her back, how could she ever have forgotten how wonderful that felt?) and drawing in short, sharp gasps of breath that Inzhu thought might have been holding back tears. The high, sharp catch in her voice when she breathed sort of lent itself to such a belief. A hand went to Inzhu’s forehead, fingertips stroking the hair at her brow. “Inzhu, you’re awake. I thought…” The suggestion of a sob tipped her voice from evenness, and Inzhu winced to hear it.

“I… Yes, I’m awake.” Her voice wasn’t as weak as she thought it would be, her throat not quite so parched, her tongue not quite so thick. Dimly, Inzhu remembered hearing tales of injured or very sick people who slept for days and weeks, who were fed water and honey to keep them alive. Was that what had been done with her? How long had she been asleep?

When Inzhu asked that very question, Nilûzîr let out a high-pitched, uneven giggle that she suppressed in a few thick, sick breaths. “Seven days it’s been, now.” Her face twisted slightly. “The old woman thought you’d be asleep longer; I suppose she doesn’t know everything after all.”

Inzhu’s stomach swooped unpleasantly. “Zhuldyz is still here?” She tried to get up from her bed—where she would have gone, she didn’t know, but the thought of fleeing was very attractive right now—but her legs wouldn’t work and she cursed the weakness that was the result of whatever had happened to her that ended with her lying here now.

But Nilûzîr didn’t seem as alarmed by this revelation as Inzhu felt, which made Inzhu wonder briefly if she’d hit her head, or if the old woman had turned out to be a witch and had ensorcelled her to forget her clear (clear even to Inzhu, who would admit she’d not been in the best state of mind at the time) distrust of her. “Anara is here. She’ll want to see you. We’ll explain what happened. Anara!” Nilûzîr called. “Anara, come here quickly!”

Heavier footfalls than what had announced Nilûzîr’s presence sounded out in the hall, what Inzhu recognized was the strike of Anara’s thickest boot upon the tiled floor. It was commonplace Inzhu had heard it a thousand times, but in the moment where her cousin appeared in the doorway, she could scarcely think of anything that sounded better.

Anara stood stock-still in the doorway, her eyes riveted upon Inzhu’s face. She looked decades older though there were no new lines on her face or gray hairs in her dark braid, but that lasted only for a moment longer than Inzhu had seen the aureole around Nilûzîr’s taut form. Anara stepped forward, once and twice and again until she was at Inzhu’s side, and the spell was broken.

Anara said nothing for what was probably only a few seconds, but felt more like an hour, her face as if carven stone, her pulse fluttering wildly in her throat. She reached out a hand (bare, cooler and softer than Inzhu remembered it being) and rested it on Inzhu’s shoulder. It wasn’t a tight grip, but it felt heavy, like the fingers had been weighted with lead. “I’m starting to wonder,” she said finally, in a slightly strangled voice, “if I shouldn’t just swallow my pride and try to get the captain of the guard to take me back on. The next time I leave, I might come back and find you _dead_.” Her voice cracked a little on ‘dead’, and she said no more.

“Well, I’m not dead,” Inzhu replied, and if she sounded a little peevish, she frankly thought that couldn’t be helped. “And I would like to know what’s been happening since I fainted. If you two have questions, I _certainly_ have questions.”

Nilûzîr and Anara exchanged long (troubled in Nilûzîr’s case, and equal parts troubled and frustrated in Anara’s) glances, before Nilûzîr sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “Alright. I suppose it’s only fair you know what happened. It doesn’t take as long as you might think.”

After Inzhu took the ring from her finger and fainted, Zhuldyz showed no signs of being ready to leave the house, regardless of the fact that that seemed to have been the sum of what she’d come there to do. Instead, she quickly took charge of the situation, positioning herself as Inzhu’s caretaker and, indeed, insisting that any physician in the city would not know what to do to care for her properly, and that Inzhu would die without Zhuldyz’s care and supervision. Nilûzîr might have found the will to defy her had she not been so distraught, but as it was she found her will overpowered and she couldn’t find it in herself to send the old woman out of the house.

Anara returned to the city the next day; _that_ was what Nilûzîr had discovered from the letters she’d picked up from the postal office, and what she had come to Inzhu’s house to tell her in the first place. She’d run to the market where she knew she’d find Anara, and told her what had happened. (“She swore violently at me for leaving you alone with Zhuldyz—“ “If you’re expecting me to apologize, you’ll be waiting a long time; I still don’t _trust_ the old bat.” “—And we ran home so that Anara could chase Zhuldyz from the house with her saber, cursing her for a poisoner and an elf-witch and a dozen other things I dare not repeat.”)

With Zhuldyz gone from the house, Anara and Nilûzîr had taken over Inzhu’s care; Anara had enough money left over after returning to Takand that she didn’t need to worry about work again for a while, and Nilûzîr had left her assistants in charge of her shop for the time being. They’d hoped that Inzhu would recover quickly, and that they’d just be able to move past all of this and try to figure out what had happened on their own. But after Zhuldyz was chased away, Inzhu’s condition, which had previously been weak but stable, deteriorated quickly, and by the evening Nilûzîr was searching frantically through nearby inns trying to find her.

“She wasn’t that hard to find.” Nilûzîr picked at the beading on her sleeve cuff. “I think she actually wanted me to find her.”

Nilûzîr found Zhuldyz and begged her to return to the house; while she might not trust the old woman, if there was any chance that she had been truthful when she said that Inzhu wouldn’t get better without her help, she would seize upon it. Anara hadn’t been happy, but had eventually relented, provided Zhuldyz did not attempt to do anything with or too Inzhu without her present.

And so they had waited, while Zhuldyz gave Inzhu what treatment she could and none of them (not even the old woman, it seemed, if a comment of Nilûzîr’s—“She honestly seemed a little worried for a while, though given how cryptic she is, who knows for certain?”—was supposed to be any kind of indication) exactly sure of just what would happen.

“I,” Anara muttered, rapping her fist against her thigh and drawing a shaky huff of breath, “have been waiting for an explanation for well-nigh a week. Given she’s been living under our roof and eating our food, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that she at least explain what _happened_ to you. But no. The old bat has kept her silence. Maybe now that you’re awake, she’ll actually tell us something.”

Nilûzîr made a humming noise in the back of her throat.

Inzhu pressed back into the pillows on her bed (grateful to her past self for buying so many for her bed, regardless of Anara’s past self’s teasing) and sighed. Her stomach growled—whatever they had been feeding her while she was unconscious, it didn’t seem to have done much to take the edge off of the hunger that inevitably must come after eating nothing for seven days.

And however longer it must have been before that.

The growl was resoundingly loud to her ears, though neither of her companions gave any sign of having heard it. But after it was over, there was still something to drown out the silence. Something she hadn’t noticed before.

Inzhu turned her head towards the window, her heart in her throat. “Is that…”

“Yes, it’s rain.”

A new voice sounded, and three heads snapped to the doorway, each of them opening their eyes wide. Inzhu flinched reflexively when her eyes found Zhuldyz’s face; ingrained too deep into memory to erase was sensation of staring into twin beacons that could pierce the shells of her mind and her heart and pick apart all of her secrets. But when she looked into Zhuldyz’s face, she saw no bright and terrible light there, and she could see the face clearly for the first time. Her face was a light brown, her skin deeply-lined and rough. Thin and long it was, the cheekbones high and narrow. Inzhu could see little of Zhuldyz’s hair under her blue shawl, but it looked dark gray and coarse. Her eyes were dark and bright, and heavy with wisdom and unfathomable age.

Zhuldyz rested her staff by the door and swept inside; Anara and Nilûzîr tensed, but made no move to make her leave. She scarcely seemed to notice they were there, anyhow; she had eyes only for the woman in the bed. “So you’re awake. That’s rather earlier than I thought you’d be awake. Between this and how easily you gave up the ring, I think you’ve a stronger will than I thought. At least, your will seems stronger than your body.”

Inzhu didn’t answer her at first. She stared at the window, at the wonderful sight of rain lashing against the pane. She didn’t ask how long it had been raining. It didn’t matter much to her. The drought was over. That was all that mattered.

But ignoring Zhuldyz in favor of the rain was not enough to make her go away. Without turning her gaze away from the window, she asked, quietly, “Did you make me give it to you?”

“No.” Zhuldyz spoke so quickly that Inzhu was, though she had no proof either way, convinced that she was telling the truth. “I did not. I wouldn’t have dared.” There was a shift of cloth like she was folding her arms about her chest. “You had to give up the ring of your own will, without any outside influence. Had I coerced you, it wouldn’t have… counted, and you would still be under its influence now. You might feel better physically if you were, but it would likely have become impossible to remove you from its influence.”

“And what would have happened, then?”

A long, hard sigh. “There are some things worse than death, child.”

At that, Inzhu looked back to Zhuldyz. The question that had been burning on the far edge of her mind ever since she’d first laid eyes on her would be delayed no longer. “Who are you?”

At that, Zhuldyz actually chuckled, a low, hoarse sound that would have been more appropriate coming from someone much larger and more robust than she. “Now, that is an interesting question. In this land, I am called Zhuldyz. To the south, I am Gimiladûn.” Nilûzîr’s eyebrows shot up. “To the west, I am called many things. To the west and north, I am Grandmother. To the west and south, I am Aerluin.” Nilûzîr’s eyebrows rose even further. “And further still west, where I spent my youth, I was named Rómestámo. So you see…” Her eyes twinkled. “I have many names.”

“And somehow you’ve still managed not to tell us who you are,” Nilûzîr muttered.

“Patience, young lady!” Nilûzîr tilted her head back and sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. “Do you go up to everyone you meet and demand to know who they are?”

“Only when they’re rather clearly not what they’re claiming to be.”

Inzhu and Anara were both torn between looking at Nilûzîr and at She-of-many-names as they frowned at each other. Finally (and Inzhu was rather surprised by this, though she knew not why), Zhuldyz conceded and sighed, nodding her head. “Alright, alright.” She sat down on a cushion on the opposite side of the bed from Anara and Nilûzîr. “Here is what I am, you three: I am a wanderer. But I do not wander without purpose. I have many purposes for wandering, and one—“ from a pocket in her dress she produced a small object that flashed like ice, though thanks to the rain and the lack of lit lamps in the room, there was little in the way of bright light “—is the finding and disposal of cursed rings.”

A thick, charged silence fell over the room, as the pounding of the rain on the roof and the window only seemed to grow louder. Inzhu eyed the ring, caught between a tendril of fear and an ill-defined longing. She fisted her hand in her quilt.

“The last test,” Zhuldyz said, very softly. “You relinquished it that day, but you must understand—there can be no doubt. I have to be _sure_. So,” and here, she held out the ring, so close that even weak as she was, it would have been little strain for Inzhu to reach out and take it, “I told you that you could have the ring back after I was finished examining it. Do you want it back?”

White-lipped, Inzhu stare at the ring, her hands practically _itching_. When she had worn it, it had taken no time at all to forget it was even there; it was just a part of herself, as natural as her skin. But the strip of flesh on her finger where it had been ached when she looked at it, and it felt so cold, like the ring had been the only thing that could ever warm it.

If that ring was indeed the source of what had led to her lying so week in her bed now, it had made her forget everything.

“Keep it,” Inzhu said tonelessly, and shut her eyes.

When she opened them again, the ring was thankfully gone, and Zhuldyz was smiling at her. “Good. If I had taken the ring off to destroy it with you still bound to it, the effects on you would have been… deleterious. I had to be sure.”

Anara made a low, aggravated noise in the back of her throat. “And that’s the end of that? She’ll be alright?”

“Once she’s recovered, yes. The ring would have let you work yourself to death before it signaled that anything was wrong—“ this she addressed to Inzhu “—but if you’ve truly shook out its hooks, it’ll trouble you no more.” Her nostrils flared as she sighed heavily. “Believe it or not, you’re actually quite lucky. The ring you found wasn’t imbued with a great deal of power.” Her eyes grew far away and, if at all possible, even more immeasurably ancient. “It must be one of the first ones they made,” she murmured, so quietly that if Inzhu hadn’t seen her lips moving, she might have thought she’d imagined it.

“Where did the ring come from?”

Even as the words left Inzhu’s mouth, she wondered if she might not be better off not knowing. She had found an apparently cursed ring in the river, and wearing it had nearly killed her. She wondered if she wouldn’t be better off just letting Zhuldyz take the ring far away, and never thinking about it again. But there was another part of her that knew she would have no rest if she let it all end without having something in the way of an answer.

Zhuldyz drummed her fingernails against her hip. “The full tale would be several days in the telling, and I suspect you children don’t want me to go on that long.” The resounding silence was confirmation enough of that. “It should be enough to tell you that, long ago, sorcerers of great power made magic rings to preserve and heal the lands they loved so well. But there are forces at work in this world who would sooner destroy and dominate than heal and preserve, and one such force corrupted the rings so that, unless wielded by one of great power and strength of will, they could not carry out the purpose they were intended for without going astray. It was less concerned with rings of lesser power, such as the one you found, but still, everything it touched was tainted. Had this ring not been tainted, who knows what you could have done with it.”

Inzhu didn’t want to know. That much she was certain she was better off not knowing.

And she didn’t want to ask this, either. She very much didn’t. Inzhu had done little for the past few months aside from caring for her plants while under the hazy, obsessive influence of a cursed ring. Vaguely she could remember the visceral euphoria she had experienced digging her hands into the earth and feeling the power pulsing under the surface, tainted gift of a poisoned magic ring. It made her sick to remember now. But she had to ask the question. She knew she did. “The ring affected the plants I grow for my business. What will happen to them after you take the ring away?”

Zhuldyz’s eyebrows lifted in something between surprise and reproof. Nilûzîr’s face contorted in worry, and Anara made a sharp, reproachful noise. It was at Anara that Inzhu directed her glare, as she snapped, “Don’t give me that; it’s my livelihood! What am I supposed to do, learn a new trade? We’d starve! I need to know if what’s growing downstairs is going to start dying as soon as that ring’s out of the house so I can _plan_ for that.”

Apparently, the clarification was all any of them needed, given the way they relaxed, which didn’t do much to make Inzhu feel better. If anything, it sent shoots of irritation racing beneath the surface of her skin. That obsession had been the _ring_ , not her (And she ignored the fact that the ring had had at least a germ to work with). She wasn’t going to fall back into it once the ring was gone. Everything would go back to normal. She hoped.

Zhuldyz waved a hand languidly through the air. “Well, with the source of the drought removed—“ which was a very odd choice of words, or so Inzhu thought “—there’s no danger of them dying of thirst. It’s difficult to say how long it will take—the rate at which the work done by the rings comes unraveled after they’ve been removed from their former sphere of influence tends to vary—but I think that after a few months you’ll see your plants start to… shrink. The ring you found really wasn’t very powerful, and you didn’t have it for long enough to make the changes really take hold, so everything should be back to normal within a year or two. Likely, you won’t have to replace any of your annuals this winter, but after that, life cycles will go back to what they were. Everything will go back to normal.”

Normal. Inzhu couldn’t remember the last time the word had sounded as sweet as it did now.

Suddenly, Zhuldyz swept to her feet, and started for the door. “Well, now that you are awake, it is apparent that the danger has passed, and I can take my leave. I’m sure you’re all relieved,” she added dryly, and no one hastened to tell her otherwise. She laughed under her breath and took her staff into her hand. “I must take the ring to those with the arts to destroy it; as long as it exists under the sun, it will pose some risk to those around it, even to those with the knowledge of how to master it to their will. But when I have done that, I will return here.”

“If you’re looking for hospitality in this house, you may find less warm a welcome than you hope for,” Anara muttered, though without real malice. It was only the fact that Inzhu would be dead if not for Zhuldyz that stopped her lips, though she would have said so with even less malice than Anara.

It would seem that such declarations offended the old woman not at all, for Zhuldyz laughed again and adjusted her blue shawl so that it sat more heavily across her shoulders. “Oh, don’t you worry. I’ve found that a certain inn a few streets away from here—The Traveler’s Well, I believe it’s called—is quite a pleasant place to stay. I think it would be best that I stay in this city for a while. It’s… interesting.”

And with that, she was gone, and the air seemed clearer and lighter when she left, the pattering of the rain less like hammers against the roof and more like the simple drumming of rain.

Inzhu leaned back into her pillows, heaving a sigh and feeling very tired again, though the tiredness wasn’t rooted in her body, which frankly felt unpleasantly awake. Every time she shifted her weight, she could feel the faint tingling burn of pressing against sunburn-blisters or raw, healing skin. Everything would go back to normal, eventually. But she knew only one way to start.

She caught Anara and Nilûzîr’s eyes and smiled at them—a weary smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Tell me everything I missed.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Éothéod** —a race of Northmen who lived in the north of Middle-Earth, near the Vales of Anduin and Mirkwood. They were the ancestors of the Rohirrim.


End file.
